Flannery O'Connor

Read and enjoyed this insightful New Yorker piece on Flannery O’Connor over the weekend. The title “How Racist?” seems like the wrong question, though... especially since the answer, in this reader’s conclusion, is very. “About the Negroes, the kind I don’t like is the philosophizing prophesying pontificating kind, the James Baldwin kind...”.
(Although she did admit, “I have read one of his stories and it was a good one.”)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/how-racist-was-flannery-oconnor

The author of the essay points out that O’Connor did address “the changing South” in her fiction, and was, of course, highly aware of the prejudices & history of white people in Georgia.

After reading the article, I was inspired to read a 1961 short story mentioned, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” (linked in comments below). The story is an excellent psychological study of the resentment of a 20-something white son escorting his old-fashioned (in manners, appearance, and prejudice) southern white mother on a bus trip around town.

On first glance, it seems like the story is also about the generational tension between the segregationist mother with her benevolent racism (she thinks black children are “cute,” and that black people have had a rough time, but the whole premise of the story is that her son must accompany her because she’s afraid she might encounter a black person on the integrated public bus) and the more enlightened integrationist college-educated white son... but, in the end, the reader is left with the uncomfortable feeling that the son is perhaps only interested in integration or equal treatment of African Americans as a way to spite his mother ...? He even fantasizes about bringing home a black friend (or girlfriend!) just to shock his mother.

(Read the story - it’s short! - and share your thoughts below! https://thomasaquinas.edu/pdfs/alumni/everything-that-rises.pdf?fbclid=IwAR27We5ZMprBq3EYhc3ATkgX0lR_1SHQLqxlJPV1jOnXsu8driPObtCG7i8)

Having died relatively young in 1964, at the peak of the civil rights movement, we will never know how or whether O’Connor’s views on racism might have evolved, personally or in her writing.

ADDED:  Insight from my father-in-law, a retired English Literature professor:

"Thanks Tiffany, for posting this and inspiring me to post one of my admittedly long-winded responses. I haven't read the New Yorker article yet but I will. The story is typical of the strengths of O'Connor's writing. But! It's interesting that you quote her remark “About the Negroes, the kind I don’t like is the philosophizing prophesying pontificating kind, the James Baldwin kind...”. First of all, her own writing is certainly "philosophizing prophesying pontificating." Her title, "Everything That Rises Must Converge," is taken from the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin. It may be functioning ironically here, but I think it fits also with other Catholic philosophical references in the story. And there is a kind of "prophesying" quality to her mid-20th-century characterizations, the mother as the aged white "belle" nostalgic for a sentimental version of the Old South that would become harder to sustain after mandated desegregation, and the son a representative of the new Southern intellectual with an as yet underdeveloped penchant for moderate reform, alienated from his own culture but not able to actively seek an alternative, and muddling about in impotent rage. Second: despite O'Connor's reputation for being unsentimental in what is said to be a Southern Gothic tradition, as confirmed by what appears to be the anti-sentimentalism of the story, I do think there remains a certain sentimentality in her underlying religious and moral philosophizing. One of James Baldwin's main criticisms of dominant American cultures of the South AND the North, was the sentimentality that substituted for deep feeling in both popular culture and in many strains of the high culture, and allowed for comforting distraction from, and ultimately denial of, conditions of real oppression and pain, . The generation of literary critics who first wrote admiringly of O'Connor's "unsentimental" stories were raised and educated on the early to mid-20th century tradition of writing that was a reaction to Victorian sentimentality, the writing of people like Hemingway and the "hard boiled" school of writers of noir fiction. But Hemingway and those who followed in his wake, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain,etc., were themselves sentimentalists about male bonding, and about the great tradition of the American man-boy--Hemingway's Nick Adams was a kind of prototype. The Southern writers, Faulkner preeminently, could be both unsentimental in delineating the dark aspects of the dominant white culture of the post-Reconstruction South and still sentimentalize "their" Negroes. Baldwin was also critical of the "protest novel"_ drawing a ink between Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) and writers of the left of the 1930s, on similar grounds of a kind of socialist sentimentalizing, as is evident in the first two essays of Notes of A Native Son, the title of which refers of course to Richard Wright's novel which Baldwin criticizes. I think, more than any other mid-to-late 20th century American writer, Baldwin understood the historical and still functional contradictions of US society and its cultures, and not just contradictions concerning race, but of gender, sexuality, class as well. Contrary to what O'Connor said of him, he didn't drop a lot of theoretical or philosophical references, and although he moralizes at times in biblical language I don't think he pontificates--that term suggests speech warranted by a powerful institution. I don't think Baldwin ever subscribed to or was a spokesperson for any kind of institutional power. But O'Connor seems bound, if somewhat ironically, to at least two powerful institutions."

ADDED:  My response:

"Thanks so much, Don. I hadn’t thought about the actual meaning of the individual words she was using against Baldwin - the three “p” words. Interesting.
The New Yorker piece, by the way, is written by a journalist who often covers Catholic issues , so it’s interesting that he did not take up more analysis about those specific words.
You mention that O’Connor was bound by two major institutions - presumably the Church and the South - and Baldwin comes up again in the article when she is approached about meeting with him while he’s in Georgia on a trip in 1959. She says “it would be nice to meet him in New York,” but she won’t meet with him in Georgia because “I observe the traditions of the society I feed on - it’s only fair.”
This is in a private letter and It’s not clear if she’s being somewhat flippant here, but it’s Interesting that she’s seen as taking a completely “unsentimental” view of that society, but not actually interested in challenging it."

FOLLOW-UP:  A response to the New Yorker piece, providing more context and history of black scholars and artists (including Walker, Morrison, etc.) responding to O'Connor: 
https://bittersoutherner.com/southern-perspective/2020/on-flannery-o-connor-and-race-a-response-to-paul-elie-new-yorker

Harper Lee and Civil Rights

Since I just finished re-reading "To Kill A Mockingbird" with my 9th graders, I decided to finally get around to reading the copy of "Go Set A Watchman" that I picked up a couple of years ago. If you don't know the story, Harper Lee wrote Watchman BEFORE she wrote Mockingbird, the publisher rejected it & suggested instead that she play up "the childhood stuff," and so she wrote & published Mockingbird about the idyllic summers of young innocent white Scout Finch against the backdrop of Depression-era racial violence in 1930s rural Alabama. Mockingbird was published in 1960 and went on to become, by many accounts, one of the best novels of the 20th century, while Watchman sat locked away in a drawer until very near Lee's death when she was talked into publishing it in 2015.

Although written before Mockingbird, Watchman takes place LATER, in the 1950s, as the story of grown up Scout (aka Jean Louise Finch), now a 20-something independent young woman who has gone off to New York but now returns to Alabama to visit her elderly father, the heroic white lawyer Atticus Finch of Mockingbird fame.


Has anyone else here read "Go Set A Watchman?" Oof, I almost wish I hadn't. Not because it is a little clunky, more overtly political, and has none of the storytelling charm of "the childhood stuff" that became Mockingbird (that publisher was right, btw), but because, it is just not where you want the Mockingbird characters to have ended up 20 years later. And not just because it turns out, surprise! ALL the white people in Maycomb are racist! (More on that below.) But also some key characters are prematurely dead (ugh), and Watchman also has some inconsistencies with the plot and characters that were later developed in Mockingbird, so that's probably another reason she did not previously publish it. FOR EXAMPLE, although only very briefly mentioned in Watchman as part of Atticus's past legal work, the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, and the KEY plot point of Mockingbird, turns out to have a DIFFERENT VERDICT than what she wrote in Mockingbird - interesting.


As for the fast-forward 20 years to catch up with a now 70-year-old Atticus Finch in Maycomb... If you thought Atticus was the white liberal moral compass of 1930s Alabama, you may end up disappointed in how that turns out. Even Jean Louise is angry about the Supreme Court (in Brown v. Board) "telling the South what to do," but boy howdy, you should hear Atticus and Aunt Alexandra (and Jean Louise's suitor, Henry, a supposed childhood love who, by the way, never appears in her Mockingbird childhood) go off on how the NAACP is trying to get black people all riled up about their rights down here! And then there's black housekeeper Calpurnia, who helped raise motherless Scout and her brother, but somewhere in the intervening years finally got fed up with the Finches and leaves them - a credible move inserted by author Lee, although from Jean Louise's still childlike and self-centered perspective this is a personal betrayal, not a political move.


It's hard to come to a conclusion about Lee's project here. Did she intend for 1930s Atticus Finch - sensitive single dad, progressive intellectual, smalltown moral leader - to EVER be the hero that millions of (white) readers have held him up to be? Or was he ALWAYS (even in Mockingbird) just progressive *enough,* committed to the pursuit of justice under the law, and equally committed to treating neighbors (black or white, rich or poor) with civility, but actually holding the same prejudices as his white contemporaries?

One of his most famous dad lines in Mockingbird is the quote about walking in another person's shoes, and he has this calm rational perspective that everyone is battling their own struggles, which we may not know anything about. But, even in Mockingbird, his own children uncomfortably struggle with how Atticus can "defend" everyone and not take a more vocal stand against all kinds of injustices?? At the end of Mockingbird, Atticus's children CHALLENGE him - how can he defend a black man against false accusations, and yet allow the white racists to express their views unchallenged? Scout wonders how her teacher at school can teach the children that anti-Semitism is wrong because you shouldn't judge someone based on religion, but the white adults all around her constantly judge black people based on the color of their skin? Atticus says everyone is entitled to their beliefs, live and let live, but the CHILDREN know that is wrong, that beliefs lead to actions. By the white juries, by the white police, by the white neighbors.


So the first reaction of (white) readers of both books (and the reaction of Jean Louise) is shock and sadness that the gentle guiding Atticus Finch of Scout's childhood - the one who loved his black housekeeper as a co-parent and defended Tom Robinson with everything he had - is 20 years later resisting the anti-segregation and voter registration efforts of the mid-1950s and joining the local "Citizen's Council" alongside the town's most obvious racists.



Adam Gopnik writes, "So the idea that Atticus, in this book, “becomes” the bigot he was not in “Mockingbird” entirely misses Harper Lee’s point—that this is exactly the kind of bigot that Atticus has been all along. The particular kind of racial rhetoric that Atticus embraces (and that he and Jean Louise are careful to distinguish from low-rent, white-trash bigotry) is a complex and, in its own estimation, “liberal” ideology: there is no contradiction between Atticus defending an innocent black man accused of rape in “Mockingbird” and Atticus mistrusting civil rights twenty years later. Both are part of a paternal effort to help a minority that, in this view, cannot yet entirely help itself."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/27/sweet-home-alabama

By the way, before teaching Mockingbird, I did some research on controversies about the novel and teaching Atticus as white savior, and about how white students might read it compared to black students. I listened to this podcast on "Teaching While White," which points out that Atticus Finch, given his own family history and upbringing, could NOT HAVE EXISTED in the way white readers have wanted him to exist.  And I now think that was probably Harper Lee's point.

https://teachingwhilewhite.org/podcast

In Watchman, Jean Louise realizes, and in an angry confrontation tells her father, that children don't learn racism from school or from society... they first learn it at home. And in that one accusation, Lee puts a completely different spin on Mockingbird, on going back and telling the story of how that happens in Scout's childhood.

Maybe the books do work as joint novels after all.

Mrs. America

I watched the first three episodes of "Mrs. America" that are available on Hulu and I just LOVED this! Great 1970s vibe in the music & artistic direction & costumes, and I smiled out loud (ha) to see Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan (love Tracey Ullman!), Bella Abzug, and Shirley Chisholm onscreen as characters!
And it is all so relevant to political conversations today, not only abortion and the ERA (fully ratified now but still not passed!), but I especially liked Episode 3 about Chisholm's presidential campaign, calls for "party unity," and the delegates debate leading up to the Democratic national convention in 1972. Chisholm's run was HEROIC in challenging sexism and racism (Does a black woman have any better a chance today? I think we've answered that question.), but Bernie supporters might also definitely relate to that episode... Just sayin'.

Btw, Phyllis Schlafly is not the complete villain here. She is hardly sympathetic in her effort to organize a false battle between housewives and feminism, but she is a complex and paradoxical character, struggling with the limitations of sexism in her own life, marriage, and career, and opportunistically stumbling into anti-ERA activism because that's where people were willing to listen to her. (She aspired to be a foreign policy nuclear arms expert, had a failed Congressional run (but refused to acknowledge that sexism impacted her chances) and when she tells her husband that she also "could have gone to Harvard law school," he reminds her that, No, actually, Harvard didn't admit women at the time Phyllis graduated from college.)

There's a great scene at the end of the third episode that provides a visual of Schlafly's intense desire for stability and security: But it's up to the viewers to conclude whether that is because she's a socially conservative Republican? or because she's a mother of three teenaged sons while the Vietnam War rages on the news every night (her main argument against the ERA was that daughters would also be drafted)? or because she's a woman and a 1970s housewife with no income or power of her own? (In earlier scenes, Schlafly's husband has to sign a credit card application for her (the law at that time), is upset when she flies to Washington and leaves the 6 kids behind *for the day,* and she worries about her own elderly mother running out of money, first dependent on her own husband and now dependent on her son-in-law.)

Watch it!

I signed up for the Shakespeare 2020 Project to read all of the plays in one year.  They provide a schedule, weekly videos and scholarly articles about the plays, and a discussion forum to connect with other people reading the plays on the same schedule. 

I just finished the first play, "Twelfth Night," ahead of schedule. On the surface, this is a simple comedy employing all kinds of typical antics around twins, mistaken identity, cross-dressing, and the ensuing romantic missteps, and it was a quick & easy one to read. But the videos and resources posted for each play are deepening my understanding of the layers and nuances, and I think the play is darker and more transgressive than it first appears. 

This play is the source of the well-known quote, "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."  Among others.  

I just learned that there was a 1996 Twelfth Night film starring Helena Bonham Carter, so I'm going to look for that later today.
On to Henry VI. 

 I'm also starting Romeo & Juliet with my 9th graders on Monday, so this independent reading project is providing additional context for teaching Shakespeare, in general.  To that end, I also started re-reading Stephen Greenblat's 2004 cultural biography, "Will in the World."  The introductory pages would be great to read aloud to students to set up study of the plays. 

I'm not entirely in teacher mode on this project, though.  Most of the plays I will be reading for the first time and it is difficult to get a full understanding from just one reading.  But I want to have a deeper understanding of Shakespeare's body of work and a greater facility with his language, for my own literary and writing purposes. This is one of my self-improvement goals for 2020.  

Found my "Women's Roles in 19th-Century America" book on the shelves at San Francisco State Library. It is dedicated to Lillian, so here she is, full circle, with "her" book.
AND I was pleasantly surprised to see how often it has been checked out.
I wonder if a prof. is assigning it for a class...? 🤔

True story: When I was in grad school I used to just sit and read on the floor on the HQ (Women's Studies) aisle and my dream was to have a book published and catalogued under HQ. Don't ever give up your dreams, kids.

I was in Berkeley all weekend with my Model UN students - a great, experienced group, and an easy trip, even though the Berkeley campus was bigger and busier and a little trickier to navigate than we're used to at Stanford. I also got to meet up with my former student, Ruby (MMS Class of 2018) who attends Berkeley now, and Miles took the train over from SF to spend some time with me on Saturday.

We wandered into a bookstore and I found this vintage book, _Woman_, published in 1901. It includes several well-known (to me, and to people in 1901, ha) contributors, including international suffragist and peace activist, May Wright Sewall; abolitionist, women's rights activist, and colonel of one of the first black regiments in the Civil War, Thomas Wentworth Higginson; and David Starr Jordan, the first president of Leland Stanford Junior University (aka Stanford University).
The book is in perfect condition, and looks brand new, which is bad for books, but good for collectors.

I was recently reading an essay by John Steinbeck in which he explained why he cared nothing for collecting old or valuable books. He complained when his publisher released special anniversary or leather-bound editions of his works, or asked him to sign copies for special distribution or sale. He did not like the idea of trying to add value to a physical book, beyond the value of the words inside. He said he never spent his money collecting books, and would rather see beloved books bent and used up and passed along to someone else.

Point taken, but I love my new 118 year old book in pristine condition. :)

RBG & the Constitution

I finally saw "On the Basis of Sex" last night. As a historian/teacher/scholar, I appreciate any effort to make research and written and oral argumentation seem exciting and suspenseful! I also enjoyed Kathy Bates as Dorothy Kenyon, an earlier feminist lawyer who had not been able to do what RBG ultimately did, and the conversation between Kenyon ---> RBG ---> RBG's let's-protest-in-the-streets teenaged daughter, Jane Ginsburg, as representative of the changes happening across the generations and the feminist "waves" working together. Nice touch, Hollywood.

Speaking of Hollywood, an older man outside the theater was handing out papers to all of us before we went in, on which he somewhat sloppily explained the the movie was full of LIES. In particular, he warned us about a scene in which young RBG notes that the word "freedom" is not in the U.S. Constitution. His handy-dandy handout helpfully pointed out that the word "freedom" is, in fact, right there in the 1st Amendment, regarding "freedom of speech."

(Hmmm.. so, he had a point, but I don't know why Hollywood would LIE about the Constitution, especially if it makes it seem like RBG doesn't KNOW her Constitution....If liberal Hollywood was going to lie, they'd want to prop up our heroine by making her look even smarter than she is, right??!)

Obviously it was my duty (as a citizen, a government teacher, and as a fan of RBG willing to turn a blind feminist eye to pesky facts like the Constitution) to respond to this dilemma, so I looked up this man's complaint and found a couple of articles that refer exactly to that scene and explain that, as a Constitutional scholar, Ginsburg was referring to the *original* unratified and unamended Constitution - in fact, her entire point in that scene in the movie was that, starting from the beginning (with the Bill of Rights), we have expanded the definitions of freedom and equality to protect citizens' rights and liberties that were not in the original Constitution. That the Constitution CHANGES, including through interpretation of the laws.

Hmph, take that old guy with nothing better to do than type up complaints about Hollywood, make a bunch of copies, and then stand outside the movie theater in the cold & rain trying to protect our democracy from RBG.

Captain Mike

From age 5 to age 20, I did not see my dad and had almost no contact with him. He later told me that he often thought of us (me and my younger brother, Nathan) but he never once worried about our safety or upbringing because he knew my mother would raise us well.

During those years growing up the name “Mike Loyd” took on a mythical presence in our lives.  It was a name as big as Texas itself.  When we were very young, my brother got mad at me for telling him we had another dad somewhere in Texas.  He thought I was crazy or mean, or both. To me, Texas seemed so far way – like a place in the past. To my brother, it was not even real.  

As we grew older, into teenagers, my mother mentioned “Mike Loyd” more often and my brother accepted that we had a dad we didn't know.  My mother told us stories about when they were kids – she and my father had grown up together, been high school sweethearts. And as my brother and I grew older, she would say that she saw much of Mike in Nathan, physically, but also his sense of humor, and wit.  “You sound just like Mike Loyd,” my mother would say, laughing and exasperated at my brother’s antics.  We always knew it was a compliment.  She only told us good things about Mike Loyd, which made his absence from her life even more bewildering.

 

I had a good childhood without him, though.  Mike was right – my mother was dedicated to us. We moved to Southern California because my stepfather was in the Navy and he was kind and dependable and worked hard to support us.  Mike Loyd thought he wasn't needed. 

But I still wondered who this funny Texas dad was.  I wondered if we looked enough like him if he would recognize us if he passed us on the street. Yes, I knew Texas was nowhere near California, but what if came to San Diego on a vacation or a business trip? (I had no idea what business he was in.)  Or what if he came to look for us? Maybe we’d bump into him. I made eye contact with strangers, so that he wouldn't miss us. 

I had to depend on him finding us, though, because I had no idea what he looked like, other than maybe an older version of my brother. And he might be wearing striped pants.  On the top shelf of my mother’s bedroom closet there was a cardboard box filled with all of our family photos.  In every baby, toddler, birthday photo of me, there’s a man without a face.  My mother cut his head out of all the photos. A headless guy in 1970s style striped pants with a wide white belt standing next to my mother in a mini-skirt.  A tall thin man with strong arms wrapped around a squirming toddler. Why had she cut him out of the photos? And then taken us to California? Why wasn’t he trying to find us?  I didn't understand my parents' choices. 

After I turned 18 – and then got married at 20 – we reestablished contact with the Loyd family – my aunt and my grandmother first, then Mike.  It took years for me to understand and open my heart to the real Mike Loyd.  He was kind and gentle, he was wickedly funny and, yes, my brother looked a lot like him. 

But he still lived in Texas and I still lived in California and, worse, he had his own personal problems he was still working on.  I had perfected thinking about my own loss for many years by then, of not having my biological father in my life.  Even after we reconnected, I held so much anger toward him and felt that he was a very selfish person who had skipped out while my mother and stepfather did all the physical, emotional, and financial work of parenthood.  It wasn’t until after my own son was born, however, that I realized what my dad had lost by not raising us.  I felt sorry for him for the first time, instead of just feeling sorry for me and Nathan.

Mike tried harder and wanted to know his grandkids and be in their lives. My brother and I called him “Mike Loyd,” but he wanted his grandkids to call him “Captain Mike” (he had been a charter boat captain in the Gulf of Mexico for most of his career).  He came to visit us in California, twice.  He played with Miles and Lillian and laughed that they were “silly and annoying.”  I couldn’t take pure joy in his visits, though, taking his every word and interaction with my young children and spinning it back on my childhood: He never knew how silly and annoying Nathan and I were together. We were pretty great kids, too, but he never knew that.  He never played with us on the floor or took a nap with us on the couch.  He never bought us gifts or sent us birthday cards, like he did for my children now.  Why did they mean so much to him now but he had let my brother and I go? Why weren’t we enough for him?

The last time I saw Mike in person was 2005. He came to California. He came to my book party when my first book was published. I took him around to the kids’ schools and activities. He got to know my husband a bit and bought our fishing boat and had it hauled back to Texas.  

Most importantly, he started telling me as many stories as he could. I didn’t ask or interview him – he just needed to talk. He wanted me to know him, but he also wanted to account for the time, for the missing years. 

We even talked about writing a book together.  I was an author and he had some crazy stories to tell about life on the Gulf of Mexico.  He also had an incredible way with words and storytelling – my mother always said that Mike Loyd was one of the most intelligent people she had known and she thought Nathan and I (both of us grew up to be writers and teachers) got our “smarts” from him. 

After that 2005 visit, he got himself into more troubles – both health-related and legal – because of his past, his addictions, his choices.  He wrote me long letters about regret and recovery.  He wanted forgiveness, maybe, but there was nothing to forgive.  By now he was more disappointed in himself than I was in him.  Mostly, I think, he just wanted to be honest with me. To come clean.  I never gave him much back. I listened, but I didn’t respond or agree or ask questions. Or forgive.

Or maybe I did, just by being there and by letting him know his grandkids.

He regularly called to talk on the telephone.  We had long conversations at least once or twice a month and wanted to know what books projects I was working on. He also wanted to talk to the kids, to listen to their stories. He thought they were brilliant and funny and creative.  To them, he was never a mythical, mysterious, bigger than Texas man from the past.  He was just Captain Mike – their grandpa.  He’d always been there.  It wasn’t complicated at all.  

I hope that was finally enough for him.

Judy, Judy, Judy... I'm pretty sure Judy Blume made me want to be a writer. Or at least she made me into a reader. I *was* her target 1970s pre-teen audience and read every one of her middle-grade and teen books about Margaret, Deenie, Sally J. Friedman, and Sheila the Great. I did not read her later "adult" books, but this one intrigued me because a) I'm revisiting writer Judy in my quest to be a YA author, and b) it's based on actual events that happened in 1952, when 3 planes crashed into the well-populated suburb of Elizabeth, New Jersey, within a 3-month period, killing the passengers on board as well as people on the ground. Each of the planes crashed near a school or orphanage, one of them just a few blocks from where the pilot's own daughter attended high school, and after the third plane crashed the old Newark airport location was shut down.
Judy Blume lived through these events as a teenager and decided to tell this amazing story of how the town dealt with these tragedies.

Short version of my writer review: Judy makes it look simple. Her prose is simple and her characters are real people with simple thoughts who use simple dialogue. Although I know it's not as simple to pull off as it looks - and, in this case, she did an incredible amount of research about the crashes and about 1950s America to flesh out these stories - it's ultimately a simple read. Maybe that makes it a great story to read - I mean, I did not put it down! And these people witnessed or lost friends in 3 plane crashes! - but there is not a lot of depth, of language or of character.

The decision to use multiple POV is central to Blume's desire to tell the story of a *town* - an entire community - and, while the thread of the story does connect everyone through the life of a young teen character named Miri (the authors stand-in), there are ultimately probably 20 different character POVs presented. Everyone in the town is connected, and several of the passengers on the doomed plane are also connected to the townspeople. It is a story of intertwined lives.

I understand Blume wanted to do this in order to show how the crashes affected the entire community, and how else to get to know about and care about the passengers on the planes than to introduce them in context, as characters, before the crashes? I found the "everyone gets a POV chapter" method ultimately less satisfying, though, as we just get the surface level of each character's life and the story - and the connections - often feels rushed because of it. Something to think about as a writer, especially as everything I've written so far has been 1st person POV, a single character's life and thoughts.
Breadth v. depth? Which do you prefer?

I am always telling my students (and my own kids) that, even if you have to do something you don't want to do, just be open to the possibility that you could still get something positive out of the experience. I do not always follow my own advice. Today I was scheduled two periods to help out with supervision during our afternoon performing arts rehearsal for the upcoming winter play. I'll admit that I was mumbling to myself about needing time to get other things done besides babysitting high schoolers backstage.

But I took a nice forest walk down to the theater/gym (before the rain & hail started) - so that was the first positive. And then I was sitting there, listening to our director get the kids organized, and then he shared this amazing quote and perspective with them about the need for empathy... Empathy for one another, as they each stretch out of their comfort zones (keep in mind that our performing arts program is *mandatory*) and take great risks in being on stage, singing, dancing, acting. But also empathy for the characters that they will embody. He read a quote about how theater builds empathy. I couldn't find the exact quote again, but I found the source for the idea from the Artistic Director at the SF Playhouse website: "When I think about it this way, it becomes clear why empathy in our world today is in such short supply. It isn’t always fun. To really feel what others suffer is painful. When we enter a character’s grief, her sorrow, his remorse, we kindle those feelings in ourselves. If all the circumstances in the theatre are just right, the lighting, the music, the acting, our hearts will jump to life and ache with the characters as they yearn, and suffer and hope. It hurts us like it hurts them and we feel joined with their humanity."

I was intrigued by thinking about the theater experience - for both actors and the audience - in this way. And I was glad I was scheduled to be there and witness this moment, the implicit education our 14-18 year olds are receiving by being involved in this enterprise, and hearing these words from such dedicated teachers.

Proud of Lilli's poem for 7th grade English: 

I am from parakeet feathers

From blankets big and small

Pink curtains in my room that match the green wall

Stuffed animals piled high

And clothes fit just for me

I am from quails

From dry grass in the front yard

Little white tails on deer

And green apples that grow on a tree in the front yard that have a sour taste

I am from bikers wearing colorful clothes

From houses mostly yellow and brown but mine is a light blue

Old mean neighbors

And cats, orange, white, and black

I am from Sadie my cousin who is just the most fun to play with

From Nate my other cousin who has a wild spirit but is so sweet

And Asher the smallest of the Wayne family who just wants to play and be your friend

I am from chill out

From okie dokie artichokie

And see ya later alligator

I am from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

Honey bunches of oats our favorite cereal

And muffins from Safeway

I am from the blue ball park in Santa Cruz

Orchard School the best place on earth

And my back yard

I am Lillian Wayne

I had a headache this morning and didn't want to go to school. I still have a lingering cold and just wanted to stay in my warm bed and sleep...  but I didn't.

Sometimes I have it all planned out what I'm going to do with each class each day and then it gets scrapped because something else more interesting comes up or we didn't finish what we were doing the day before or whatever, so I've learned not to over-prepare.  Also, our class periods are only 45 minutes long, so it's usually pretty frantic and limited what we can accomplish on any one day.  Some days, though, we accomplish a surprising amount.  Another factor is that our school does a lot of "extras" that take away regular class time.  For example, the seniors are going away on a one-day trip this Thursday and then I only have them once next week because the whole high school goes into a "special" Performing Arts schedule with daily rehearsals leading up to the all-school production. Other times the students want to leave class to take photos for the yearbook or leave early for sports or have a Quidditch tournament.  In the spring, the various grades will be going on one-week trips to various locales. Core subject teachers at our school are extremely generous with giving up their class time to all kinds of special projects!  So I just go with the flow...

It's not like college, though, where I am presenting detailed lectures or slides or have a set amount of material to get through.  The main goal in high school English class is to discuss the literature we are reading, to do some vocabulary work, and to do creative writing exercises.  Beyond that, I go in each day and look around on the internet for interesting literary news or poems of the day (Writer's Almanac is a good resource).  Like today was the birthday of Zora Neale Hurston, a fact commemorated on Google and especially relevant to my 11th graders who read "Their Eyes Were Watching God" last summer.

I think they were surprised to see their English curriculum validated by Google, ha.  I love that - having them see connections outside the classroom.

So I read them a piece about Hurston's background and we talked about the Harlem Renaissance and some other writers they may or may not have heard of and I told them about Alice Walker "rediscovering" Hurston and then expanded that to talk about how women's studies and ethnic studies in the 1960s and 70s brought about a resurgence of interest in different traditions and canons, etc. etc.

None of that was planned. That was just the 11th graders. Technically, I have designated Tuesdays as Poetry Day, and I do try to be somewhat systematic about that since it is an AP Lit course and they need some technical info.  So we moved from Hurston to a discussion of the villanelle as a form. I'm not a poetry expert, so I am truly learning with them.  We talked about the form and structure that makes a villanelle and we looked at two awesome examples:  Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," and Sylvia Plath's "Mad Girl's Love Song."  Read it, if you haven't:  http://structureandstyle.tumblr.com/post/30905701054/mad-girls-love-song 

From there, I threw in another Plath poem just for fun, even though it's not a villanelle: "Metaphors."

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.

Did you guess the riddle?  We analyzed each line, but I mostly held back and let them figure out the imagery, the metaphors.  FINALLY, they got it! 

..............

She's pregnant!

Here's the funny part, though...  We had a surprise classroom visit by head of school right at exact moment students were *enthusiastically* discovering the meaning of the poem.  I mean, not that that doesn't happen EVERY DAY, haha (not), but they were REALLY into this poem and it was really perfect timing.  Whew.

So that was one class today.

At lunch time, Lillian and several of her friends came to visit me, asking for money for snacks and asking for sleepovers.  The room is filled with high schoolers studying and talking during lunch time.  One senior wants to sit at my desk to talk about the Hamlet homework questions because he's struggling with reading the text on his own.  He's working hard at it and so I am THRILLED to discuss with him.  He's using my copy of the text and a stack of my notes fall out.  He hands them to me and apologizes - I tell him that these were my notes from over the break, when I decided to write down all of Ophelia's lines from the play because I wanted to understand her better as a character. He is more shocked at my nerdiness than anything else and kind of just stares at me, but I think it's important to let students know that teachers do things like that. I'm not a literary dictator just demanding that they "engage" with things - I am truly invested in getting something new out of my own reading or re-reading of each text and in being a continual and habitual student myself.  :)

My 10th graders had a double English period, so we continued our reading of Hawthorne's short story, "The Birthmark."  The language is really difficult for them, though the concept or theme of the story is pretty simple.  But I want them to appreciate the *language.*  So we read it slowly, and together.  Then I decided that, even though they aren't having formal poetry study like the AP class, I would have them read the Thomas and Plath poems, too.  The villanelles.  Poetry is still new to them.  Their favorite poets are Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss, though one student mentions Pablo Neruda and another shows me he is looking up Shakespearean sonnets on his phone.  They want to know what "forked lightning" is.  They want to know what makes two non-rhyming words "count" as a rhyme (Plath rhymes "again," "insane," and "men," for example, and this really bothers some students). They want to know what "counts" as a poem in the first place and we talk about epic poems and prose poems and song lyrics.  You never know where the discussion will lead.

I had a big plan to start reading the Book of Job with the 9th graders today.  It is next on their curriculum and it is something that I've had to do some pre-studying about because I was really not sure how to approach it with them.  But yesterday for Creative Writing they started class-produced stories (one person starts a story and each person in the class adds to it) and today they wanted to finish reading them.  They were having such a blast that I put Job aside for another day.  The stories got a little bit out of control, though, so probably good that we didn't get any head-of-school visits during that period, haha.

I didn't have the 12th graders today.  They have an elective or college advising period on Tuesdays.  I have assigned them an essay to read for tomorrow: "How Should One Read a Book?" by Virginia Woolf.  It came up in a review essay I read via facebook the other day and I'd never read the essay, so I found it and decided to discuss it with the seniors.  The main point of the essay is how to be an active rather than passive reader, and that reading and writing must go hand-in-hand. I hope it speaks to them on some level. One of them already sent me their required short response to the piece.

The seniors are not yet college students (as I would like to treat them), but they think they already know everything they need to know from high school.  I don't care *what* specific thing we are reading together - there are a million combinations you could put together for a class syllabus - my goal is just to make them THINK about literature and to encourage them to be SEEKERS.  But still, some are reluctant to expend the effort. They want to do the minimum - they are put out by any  expectations on my part. Not joking - when I handed out this essay yesterday, one of them said, "But we're already reading Hamlet, we're not supposed to read anything else."  I try not to take it personally - I know they are the class that misses their regular teacher the most, but, unfortunately, they are the oldest students and should be the most adaptable.  Life post-high school is going to be about adaptability. They are going to have a lot of different teachers and different expectations in college. They are not going to have their hands held the entire way.  In a small school and a small class (18 students) the expectations are high - for the students and for myself - but everyone feels entitled to express their opinion, for better or worse.  Because it's a small class, it is a struggle to NOT let such vocal students set the tone for the entire class or interfere with those individuals who have a more open attitude to learning.  Because there ARE those seniors who recommend literary articles TO ME (love that) or email me with their assignments before they're actually due or volunteer to read parts in class or silently turn in brilliant writing or who come in at lunch to discuss the readings. Those things make my day. :)

Sometimes I start to doubt myself and I start to panic. Am I teaching them the right things at the right time? Are we doing enough?  Am I working with them enough on their individual writing skills?  Do they know enough vocabulary?  Will they all succeed on the AP, the SAT, and in college?  Of course, that's not all my responsibility right now, and it's not the definition of "education" that any of us subscribe to on the surface, but I still think about it.  Other times, I trust I am just a guide and if I have good resources and follow the students' leads, the only definition of success is that they take responsibility for their own learning journey. And some days I just have a headache or can't think of what to make for dinner or have too many emails to respond to and if I don't record some of these little moments of fun and discovery, they'll be gone forever.

Career Reflections and Plans

I usually take some time at the end of one year and start of a  new to reflect on all the things I did NOT accomplish, all the ways my career has fallen flat, all the books I have NOT published, all the ways I am not living up to my potential or my expensive degree, haha.  But I am ending this year content and surprised at where 2013 has ended and hopeful about 2014.

 I spent the first half of the year ramping up my freelance editing and writing business. I took on numerous dissertation clients (thanks to word of mouth, more than I could handle, actually!) and wrote a dizzying number of textbook chapters, study guides, lesson plans, course curricula, and don’t even remember what else. I also indexed a friend’s fabulous history book, finished up editing a 4-volume encyclopedia on the history of women’s rights in the U.S., and signed on to write/edit a 2-volume work in the history of technology and inventions. I also had the incredible experience of being invited to post a short piece I had written about same-sex marriage that received an overwhelming and stunning number of views and reblogs and retweets.  As the numbers piled up and the responses (good and bad) flowed in, I was sure this was the start of my new career as a blogger, but perhaps not, ha. Still, it was an awesome experience, the largest audience I've ever had, and I loved writing it.  Lastly, I was (still am) determined to find an agent for my historical novel manuscript, and tried not to be discouraged by the rejections, focusing instead on the fact that *several* agents asked to see the full manuscript, at least. I sent the last big round of queries in July.

 Even though my work plate was filling up, I needed something more regular (especially if we were going to be able to send Lillian on to middle school at Mount Madonna School), and so I also spent many months (in 2012 and 2013) looking for a full-time editing or teaching job. I finally broke into the pool to teach an online college course and completed that training over the summer, but I also sent my resume to local charter and private high schools, hoping to find a full-time position and really wanting to do something different than return to adjunct college teaching. I did not rule out the latter, though, as bread-and-butter work, and in late August I was offered two courses at two different local colleges. Surprisingly, I said No. Here I was trying to drum up work for all these months and now I had too much of it. Besides, something told me that the effort (the driving, the prep for new courses) would be more than the benefits. I always hate saying No to paying jobs, but also hate saying No to colleagues in need and to opportunities, as you never know what further doors will be opened. I said No, though, and planned to focus on my writing projects as the kids prepared to start a new school year (7th and 10th grades).

 Another factor in my saying No to the local adjunct jobs was that David started a new job with a medical device company on September 1st. The offer came somewhat suddenly and he agonized over leaving his long association with the skateboard company, as they had been good to us, but besides being a positive career move for him as an engineer and allowing him to revamp his workshop and work at home full-time, the new job brought an increase in salary that relieved some of the worry about keeping both kids at MMS. Things seemed to be smoothing out.

 Everything changed in September when I was asked to step in as long-term sub for the high school English teacher at MMS. I had subbed for this teacher a few times in the past, but now she needed to go on medical leave for at least 6 weeks. I was (still am) completely honored that she asked me and that she and the head of school entrusted me with the English and Creative Writing classes for the entire high school, grades 9 through 12. I felt that everything had come full circle in a weird way. Taking two years to write my novel and to continue my own literary education. Stepping away from the college classroom and writing high school textbooks and curricula and study guides. And being completely invested in the quality of instruction at MMS, for the sake of my own kids. I have brought all of this to the English classroom in what turned out to be not only a longer-term job than originally planned, but just a BIGGER job than I could have imagined. 

 When I got the call in early September, it was not that I was simply "available," or wasn't doing anything else. It was that I knew immediately that this was what I was meant to do for now – that it was what *I* wanted to do, more than any other job I had been looking for, but also that this teacher needed me and I would (hopefully) be setting her mind at ease about leaving her job and her students on such short notice. And once I showed up in class on the first day, I knew this would be more than a "sub" job and more than a full-time job. I did not hesitate to tell my women’s rights editor that I couldn’t work on any of the finishing details of the book (timeline, intro, bibliography) and that they would have to do it in-house (this was huge for me, too, as I am such a perfectionist about work that goes out with my name on it – but my priorities had shifted). I immediately emailed my technology and inventions editor that the book would have to be postponed until next year or that they could feel free to find another writer (this was a big deal, too, because if they cancel my contract, I will owe them advance money I’ve already received, but so far they haven’t cancelled it or rescheduled it). I said No to a couple of other freelance offers that came up, but I have continued to teach the online college course because it’s a very flexible schedule and it was difficult to break-in to online teaching in the first place, and I don’t know how long I’ll be at MMS.

 Even though the teacher was telling everyone she would be gone for 6 weeks, the message I was getting from the school was to be flexible and, in my mind, I knew I would be there at least through final exams and winter break. Indeed, the original six weeks came and went without anyone really commenting on the date, as her medical condition was raising more questions than answers. I still don't know exactly how long they will need me, perhaps through the school year now, perhaps off-and-on if she plans to return at least part-time.

 YES, I would like to stay at MMS through the year as I am very invested in the work I’ve done with these particular students and have loved every day of it! I wish I’d kept a blog of it all, but I HAVE, at least, kept a really messy handwritten notebook of what we’ve done every day. It’s been very emotional at times, filling the shoes of a very beloved teacher who is out due to difficult circumstances, but the head of school, the other faculty, and the parents have all supported me 100%. And what an amazing opportunity I have had to put everything else aside and not only get to know all of these students and get new insight into my kids’ school, but to be forced to read (or re-read) an amazing list of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. That is just what writers always wish for – more time to read – and I do not doubt that, working side-by-side with the students, my own literary education will continue to unfold and enrich my own writing in new and unexpected ways.

 The one thing I do miss, then, is my own creative writing. So my goals for 2014 include revising my historical novel manuscript and reviving the agent search. I also have 25,000 words of a Young Adult novel that I am feeling deserves some new attention. I started this novel last year, in 2012, but is it too much to say that it has been a fortuitous happenstance that I have had the privilege of spending the past three months in the daily company of teens, talking about books and their lives?